Dimensions of Citizenship: Architecture and Belonging from the Body to the Cosmos, the official U.S. entry at the recently-concluded 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, will be on view for the first time in the United States at Wrightwood 659, a new art space located at 659 W. Wrightwood Avenue in Chicago, from February 15 through April 27, 2019. Devoted to exploring the notion of citizenship today and the potential role of architecture and design in creating spaces for it, Dimensions of Citizenship comprises seven unique installations, each created by a transdisciplinary team of architects and designers. Commissioned by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and The University of Chicago (UChicago) on behalf of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the U.S. presentation of Dimensions of Citizenship on view at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago is made possible by Alphawood Foundation Chicago. The exhibition will be accompanied by a range of public programs exploring citizenship and belonging, including talks, performances, workshops, and engagement with local partners (to be announced shortly).

(CHICAGO, IL – April 6, 2018)—“Ai Weiwei: Trace in Chicago,” an exhibition of one of the renowned Chinese artist’s most significant projects in recent years, will be presented in Chicago—in its first showing in the Midwest—from May 9 to June 30, 2018. Presented by Alphawood Exhibitions and organized by the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, the site-specific installation will be on view at 659 W. Wrightwood Ave., in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. In order to maintain an intimate and contemplative experience of the work, admission is limited and by online reservation only. Free timed tickets will be available shortly. To receive a notification when free tickets become available, please register at alphawoodex.org. Walk-ins will not be accommodated.

A dark moment in America’s history re-visited by New York’s senior senator. Chuck Schumer is here with his reaction to the International Center of Photography’s exhibition about Japanese internment camps here in the U.S. He’ll explain why he feels the exhibition is particularly timely.

“This will increase our public profile, and people who didn’t know about us before will know us now,” said Masequa Myers, executive director of the center. “This new relationship will make available resources and give us exposure that the center deserves. We will be a bigger part of the tourism promotion, and visitors to the city will know the South Side Community Arts Center is a place you must see.”

In the 16th century, gazing out from the decks of ships off the coast of China, Portuguese sailors saw it: a great green mass, thick with mountains and trees, rising from the sea. “Formosa!” they exclaimed—“beautiful!”—anointing the verdant place that would come to be known as Taiwan. In this new work, choreographer Lin Hwai-min and his Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan take that appraisal as inspiration for their own work of abstract beauty born from land and lore.

Alphawood Gallery used to be a bank. For its latest exhibition, focusing on Japanese Americans incarcerated in U.S. camps during World War II, Alphawood curators placed a video of former Chicagoan inmates in front of the old bank vault, bars and all. The effect is striking: A familiar gallery in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood has become a jail.

“Then They Came For Me” marks the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the "internment" of all people on the West Coast thought to be a threat to national security. Nearly 120,000 people of Japanese descent were “evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded relocation centers,” according to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Pelosi joined the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus to praise Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children, for "advancing the American dream with their courage and their optimism and their inspiration." She thanked the lawmakers present for being there before she warned that Dreamers may face the same fate as Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II.

"A week and a half ago, I was in Chicago, and I saw this art exhibit that I was invited to see. It's called ‘And then they came for me,' and it's about the internment of the Japanese-American patriots in our country who were interned into camps during World War II while their family members were fighting for freedom for America and for the world in World War II," Pelosi said.

The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, along with Alphawood Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation (GDDF), and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation—collectively known as AD3—understand this dilemma, so they created an "Innovation Bootcamp" geared toward small nonprofit organizations in the Chicago area.

The Learning Conference 2017 offered a range of perspective and ideas on learning for continuous improvement. As grantmakers, we want to know if our efforts are making a difference and how we can improve our work over time. Often, we are not getting the most from evaluation, because it is in isolation from grantees, communities and peers, and too few of us are sharing what we’re learning, both in our successes and failures.

Then They Came for Me examines a dark episode in U.S. history when, in the name of national security, the government incarcerated 120,000 citizens and legal residents during World War II without due process or other constitutional protections to which they were entitled. Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, set in motion the forced removal and imprisonment of all people of Japanese ancestry (citizens and non-citizens alike) living on or near the West Coast. During this 75th anniversary year of Executive Order 9066, we look back at this shameful past to learn lessons for our present and future in the face of new challenges created by fearmongering and racism at the highest levels of government.

CHICAGO (March 9, 2017) Alphawood Gallery announces Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII and the Demise of Civil Liberties, an original exhibition opening at 2401 N. Halsted Street, Chicago in June 2017.

Then They Came for Me will examine a difficult and painful episode in the history of the United States when the federal government forcibly removed and imprisoned thousands of American citizens without due process simply for being born Japanese American. Through an exploration of art, artifacts and programming, Then They Came For Me will invite comparisons between this dark chapter in America’s past and current political events. The exhibition will be free and open to the public.

Almost inconceivably, this is the first such survey to appear in major museums; it debuted at the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington, and its most recent stop before Chicago was at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City.

A massive new art exhibition just opened in a new gallery created specifically for the show. At the corner of Halsted Street and Fullerton Avenue, a former bank has been re-imagined as a museum. Now called the Alphawood Gallery, the space is home to an exhibition that offers a variety of creative points of view on AIDS, art and America.